People have a problem because she looks very, very young and it says BESTIALITY underneath.

who says it's a man on the couch? could be female.

I find that pink sofa distasteful--that's what *I* think!

mmmm manly female?

i swear those feets and that hand in the distance reek of masculinity.

maybe we're all being fucked with and the girls is really a guy???

farewell, sweet bestiality.
hello, slippery fellatio.

Can't a girl have a good cry into a friend's crotch anymore without people getting the wrong idea?

the toenails are well-trimmed, the arm is skinny, and there's a bracelet, and the pants are pressed with a crease. i'd still say person on the couch could be female, though it could also be a gay man. and the the gender of the person on the floor is also unclear. seems female, but no visible bust/curve that would make it definite.

i thought the cover was kind of trite. i was more offended to be so freaking bored. but i think she's looking for a cookie, cuz the poor thing looks starved.

on a different point: what's with the constant apologist bullshit? "we don't know, it could be a woman" are you an idiot? have you never seen a woman before? or maybe you've never seen a man before? and what difference would that make? what the fuck is up with the "we don't know" "we can't know" crap? it is a cultural phenom that is maddening in its willful idiocy. every time someone says, "i had this shitty experience, and i think it might have been because i am black/a woman/queer. . ." some ya-hoo says, "maybe when the man screamed "nigger bitch" from the window of his car, he was being *ironic? you shouldn't be so quick to judge."

bill, nevermind, i see you are in fact a complete freaking idiot.

It seems that copies in the Housing Community Center at Evergreen are also missing their covers.  Given the setting, though, I'm wondering: Were they removed, or snapped up?

She's clearly thinking of getting a nose extension and there were no Groucho glasses in the house to see how it would look.

Hm, perhaps not...Maybe he's demonstrating a wrestling move to her.

They both look so - casual.

Whatever he's getting from her, i want one too!

I hate to naysay, especially when stranger covers represent the only real art I ever really get to see anyway, but I agree with "trite". It just hit me as this completely inoffensive image daring me to be offended. But I wasn't, because oral sex isn't offensive to me, and also because everyone seems to have all their clothes on. Dumb.

I do, however, adore the colors and the complimentary colors used in the rest of the cover. Tres Khaki! Looks good outdoors!

I would like to point out that PettiRosso has the best bagel sammiches in town.

why is that?!

Too bad about their glacial service.

Dear Boring:

spotting ambiguity is being an apologist? you've never seen an androgynous-looking man or woman? perhaps the photo is trying to test our assumptions: everyone immediately assumes it's a woman and a man, but there aren't the physical or social signifiers which make that definite.

i may be an idiot, but you're either blind to ambiguity or stupid. but then again, those two are the same thing.

Are you fucking asexual? Have you ever even seen YOURSELF naked? That's obviously a dude receiving a zipper sniff from a LADY.

And perhaps the photo can suck my ass.

that's why you call ahead

shazaam!

The apartment is empty because it is really a motel room. The crossed legs belong to a now-dead trick, and the hooker blowing him is trapped. See, the guy had a weak heart, so when he shot into her throat he clenched up and died, and she passed out from a lack of oxygen. Then he went flaccid so she could breathe again, but by the time she came to, rigor mortis had set in so she was head locked. Now she has to eat her way out. It's really offensive.

call ahead for the bagel, not a zipper sniff.

for ass-sucking you have to call ahead? or is it for bagels? or is that ambiguous? or am i an idiot?

Snep - Stranger covers = art? bwahahhahhhhah.....on man, oh MAN, Im dyin' over here....

david's comment wins by providing the fullest narrative closure. though the hooker could be an underage teen boy with cross-dressing proclivities. and does the john have a bagel sandwich in his pocket?

For a real laugh, check out the orcas on the cover the Weekly. Super funny.

Speaking of the Weekly, why isn't Dan Savage doing his Smaller Weekly Watch thing anymore? He's got boasting rights 1nce again this week.

It's Stranger 108 pages V. Weekly 84. The Stranger is 24 pages bigger. What's up at the Weekly? Terribly funny covers, though.

I hate to tell you the truth because it's not that exciting... but it's just me and my sister "wrestling".

ERudite, Dan invoked the mercy rule. The Weekly was getting trounced too badly every week.

bill - that you experience it as ambiguity is, in my argument, the essential proof of your idiocy. the same way that saying my apartment might be your cat means that something is amiss in one's cognitive function. it isn't the existence of ambiguity, but the forcible application of ambiguity where none exists. there is ambiguity in the photo, but not regarding their sexes. unless, of course, you're an idiot.

david, my only ammendment to your reading would be that they are both dead, and possibly it was drug related. . .

hey bored: please point out the penis and the vagina in the photo--that'd be the only unambiguous proof i would take. you ought to get out more often in the world where you might see some skinny effeminate men and sinewy masculine women.

but thanks for the cat/apartment bullshit--i can use that as a prime example of fallacious argumentation.

hey bored: please point out the penis and the vagina in the photo--that'd be the only unambiguous proof i would take.

It must be impossible for you to get laid.

Or, a total nightmare half of the time.

hey denise: when getting laid, one has more information than a well-cropped and cleverly composed photo to work with. or at least i do.

The main thing is that the guy's (or whatever's) feet are really beautiful right there. I love pictures of empty rooms.

Utterly beautiful.

Seattlest says "Thar' She Blows!"

The picture is beautiful, I love the way they look so comfortable. HOWEVER,this is a very intimate sexual image featuring a VERy young looking girl and an older looking man and I find that innapropriate since it is being mass produced. I think that the oversexualization of young women is wrong and offensive and while this photograph might be saying something separate in a different context, being mass produced and especially the casual nature of the photograph could make it appear as if I a young girl with her head in an older mans crotch is a perectly natural and accepted thing. Which it is not.

Christina where do you get that he's an older man? I'm staring at the cover right now and I can't see it at all. Also, that girl looks skinny but how does she look young? Could be! I just think you're reading too much into it-- I don't see it.

Judging from the pastel blue sleeve and the slim watchband, the couch potato is female. The large feet indicate that it's neocon pundit and lesbian-with-an-Adam's-apple Ann Coulter.

I think it's fine, and isn't even necessarily overly sexual. She's nuzzling him in the crotchular region, but it doesn't have to be over sex. I love my fiance all over, and when I want to cuddle up to him, sometimes I cuddle his jank area with no concrete thoughts of sex.

However, this man's feet are alarmingly scary, and she is clearly too cute for him. He'd better be awesome at nuzzling her crotch, if you know what I mean.

With the shit happening in South Dakota (the right to a safe and legal abortion in the United States) and the shitstorm basically everywhere in the US and THIS get almost 40 comments. I don't get it.

Christina,
younger girl? older man? wtf are you talking about?
It looks like a 20-something couple.
You're trying way too hard.

she's giving him a blow job.

next question.

Opps!! I meant to say "... the shitstorm basically everywhere in the MIDDLE EAST..."

i believe that is the yoga position,"frog tumbling pebbles"
hey, it keeps you amused when your flat is as empty as theirs' appears to be.

To me it's an androgynous emo boy crotchnibbling his best friend. But that does not mean theyre gay. (except in my fantasy world)

Hey, welcome to the Land of the Free and home of the Brave! It's your choice to pay attention or not, to pick it up or not, to like it or not, explain it to your kid or not, man or not.
I can't have my copy? In my country? You need to tear all the covers off (etc.) like some self-important Mother Goose? Save me from the Haulocaust maybe, sure, Let's Roll, but don't fuck with my free newspaper, dink. What, are you my boss?
Plus, you just went home to watch Tony Soprano get a blow job in his club while Ralphie beat the "whoor" to death outside. Out of my face, dink.

Oh you crazy Stranger people -- you're such SCAMPS!

slut

The apartment is so empty because they can't afford furniture. They got the hideous couch free off of Craig's List.

The person on the couch is a woman with mannish feet. Notice the thin, hairless arm wearing a bracelet. It also appears that she's wearing a shirt with 3/4 sleeves. I've never seen a man wearing 3/4 sleeves.

First, Muslim Seattleites swiped copies of The Stranger over the Danish cartoons. Now feminists are tearing the covers off. Who will The Stranger offend next?

We're working up a piece that is sure to annoy Seattle's Unitarians—dangerous religious extremists if ever there were any.

Democrats are some of the biggest proponents of censorship of 'offensive material'.

This is roughly similar to conglomerate weeklies putting a slut on the cover to move copies, except taking it a step farther. The Stranger printed a provocative cover to get people's attention, and there isn't even a story about heterosexual blowjobs in this issue! I call shenanigans.

People like the woman mentioned in the beginning of this entry, however, make me sick. That sort of thing is why the term Feminazi was invented. Let people form their own opinions.

Well, I think that they just moved into that apartment the night before. They just woke up and only have one chair. Plus her nose is cold

Male feet.

She is looking for the pachouli smell.

I don't even think it is erotic.

Of course, if you are a virgin, maybe.

Or wussy fag - like my roomie.

Wow. Nice to know the Stranger is run by a bunch of creepy, perverted nerds with a hard-on for ugly 70's K-Mart fashion. Jesus Christ.

The couch was in the alley for days.Two legs off, ripped on the back as well. And the cat urine smell is horrid.

The girl on the floor is on very strong downers she bought from her older sister who traded alley sex for them.

Yes it is sexual, but, like stoners have vague impulses that pass for the real thing. Remember she is mostly asleep but his crotch infection offers a smell she finds intoxicating.

They guy on the couch is hidden because he is her math teacher - at the same private school where her mom teaches.

The room is empty because this is a squat - in the bedromm is a matress on the floor with dirty sheets that your Granny would burn, along with the pile of Goodwill rags - never washed and three years high.

And, yes, there are many many roaches in the small kitchen only slightly less ugly than all the rat droppings in the cabinets.

The cops have been watching this place, and in just 22 minutes our cover couple will enter another world they have never dreaemed of. Hard time for a few pills - this is Lincoln, Nebraska after all.

What we're losing sight of here is this: it's a beautiful picture. That makes it cover-worthy, so far as the dopes who run the Stranger are concerned.

LOVE the photo, and I too think there is a lot of gender ambiguity there, which is interesting.

People get worked up about some fucking odd things.

It's not Art, provactive, or erotic — it's just a photo of two hopeless geeks in cheap thrift shop clothes. Unfortunately, it's not even interesting enough to be offensive; it's pedestrian at best.
:)

"It's not Art. . . "

Oh, ok then.

Is it at least lowercase-a-art? Just by virtue of the not-Artist's intention? And the use of, you know, photographic equipment?

Ridiculous.

"Is it at least lowercase-a-art"

Not unless you think the photos in JCPenney catalogs are art.

"Not unless you think the photos in JCPenney catalogs are art."

precisely my point-

I was just at the post office on 4th in Sodo, where this issue is turned backwards in the Stranger newspaper dispenser outside; I imagine someone figured it was a good way to hide the cover from the easily offended.

her nose is obviously cold and she just wants to keep it warm.

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